Garden Boxes are In!

Last night I assembled my garden boxes! As you know, this has been a long time in coming, and I am not the most patient person in your circle of friends. I had ordered the metal corners from Gardener's Supply, and I had already cut my cedar planks to size. I felt like I was pretty much ready to go.

The assembly was straight forward enough; you slide the planks into the slots and put in the screws (provided) to hold them in place, and then tap in the corner toppers. Except that the cedar planks were about 1/4" wider than the slots they were supposed to sashay into. I got creative and used my framing hammer to soften the hard pointy edges of the boards into a more rounded shape that could slide (there was no sliding -- it was more of a forcing action) into the slots. Once again, a rubber mallet was a life saver. I felt sort of badly for my next door neighbor who was working from home... and hoped that she didn't have any conference calls going on.

The box corners are not all tidy 90 degree angles because of the plank issue, but they look good.

Placing them was the next issue; turns out my plot wasn't "quite" 10' x 10', so my perimeter paths aren't as wide as I wanted them. Partly that is my fault because I failed to take into account the plank width in doing my calculations, which means I lost 8 inches. So I kept the 2' wide foot path down the center, and I'll have to dig out some more around the edge. I think I probably would have ended up doing that anyway though, because the 1 foot I had alotted isn't wide enough; it needs to be 2. Lesson learned. (I hope that my vegetables grow so huge that even with a 2 foot path I'll be pushed off the path!) I have some weed-stop fabric for the footpath and then probably some pea gravel will go on top.

I have the dirt and related goodies for each box stacked by each box. I think the bags look larger than what each box will hold, but that's the "recipe" from my organic garden place for each box. They haven't lead me astray yet, so I trust them. Tonight I plan to mix the dirt and mark the grids on my boxes. We are have a chance of rain tomorrow (plus it's date night) so if all goes well, I should be planting seeds Thursday night after work.

The bed you see in the background with the curved edge will be my herb bed...

I don't have to tell you I am happy.